Networking clear up question
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Likely, I missed something. There have been a couple different people either using a term at work that is not correct, or I am wrong here.
Me: "Is that SAN FC or ethernet?"
Person 1: "It is iSCSI."
Me: "Ok, so the physical interface is ethernet then...? I need to know what card is in it."
Person 1: "It is iSCSI..."
Me: "Right, that is the protocol the servers connect to it by. I need to know... nevermind, I'll just look myself... Glad I looked, it's FC."Received an email from another person about something completely unrelated to the SAN discussion... "the new iSCSI switches are NOT trunked to the rest of the network." ... so, ethernet switches?
Am I missing something here? There's no physical 'iSCSI' I thought... it's an IP based networking protocol, not an actual physical interface.
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Correct. I suspect mis-communication.
You can have iSCSI over Fibre or Ethernet, The protocol is always iSCSI but the interface can and does change.
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@BBigford Sounds to me like the other people are missing something.
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iSCSI is not physical at all. It's a Layer 7 protocol that rides on TCP/IP. So similar to HTTP, SMTP or XMPP.
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Haha k, thanks. Glad that was cleared up. I was thinking I had missed something for years.
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There were so many people using the term to describe physical interfaces, I was doubting myself.
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@BBigford said in Networking clear up question:
There were so many people using the term to describe physical interfaces, I was doubting myself.
Physical interfaces or the switch that was only going to be used for iSCSI?
Just like you have FC switches...Are they regular switches that are only used for FibreChannel or are they switches that can only connect to FibreChannel cards?
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@BBigford said in Networking clear up question:
There were so many people using the term to describe physical interfaces, I was doubting myself.
That's a bit worrisome.
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There is such a thing as an iSCSI card, but it is still Ethernet.
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@travisdh1 said in Networking clear up question:
@BBigford Sounds to me like the other people are missing something.
Missing a LOT I would say.
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What did they have to say when you explained the difference between a protocol and a physical connector?
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It easy to see how the average 1 man shop could be confused. I've heard vendors (mostly in the VMware days) say "How are you connected, FC or iSCSI?"
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@Mike-Davis said in Networking clear up question:
It easy to see how the average 1 man shop could be confused. I've heard vendors (mostly in the VMware days) say "How are you connected, FC or iSCSI?"
Well of course. Because those are the options. The only SAN protocols of any merit are those two. There are goofy niche things like ATAoE and FCoE or switched SAS but in the real world there is only FC and iSCSI to pick from.
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@StrongBad said in Networking clear up question:
What did they have to say when you explained the difference between a protocol and a physical connector?
Acted like they didn't hear what I said. lol
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@BBigford said in Networking clear up question:
@StrongBad said in Networking clear up question:
What did they have to say when you explained the difference between a protocol and a physical connector?
Acted like they didn't hear what I said. lol
Probably what they did the last 100 times someone pointed out how clueless they are. Only a trend of burying their heads in the sand would allow them to think that they could state something like that out loud and not sound like idiots.
